Part 58

I had given her a list of topics. The first was the idea of God. In this we found we agreed, and it gave occasion for much reviewing. Ruth had translated all her ideas from the vocabulary of Christian Science to that of our club, and this helped her to shape her thoughts. We spoke at some length of the personal and universal self. They called it “two selves,” and I answered them that it was only one, the one including the other.

With the subject and matter and spirit we had some trouble. They all understood what I said, but failed—I, too—to understand Ruth; and we are not sure now whether she and I agree.

Marian said: “Scientists speak of ‘dead matter,’ of all matter as dead. Is that so?”

I repeated my ideas on spirit and matter—all form is an expression of spirit—and also insisted on the limitations of our knowledge. I said: “Matter seems never to be dead, because when one force takes leave of it, another comes into possession, and decay is always the beginning of new life.”

Marian answered: “You mean the particles in this table are held together by a force?”

“Surely.”

“What is it? Does it feel?”

Again I pleaded ignorance.

We spoke of form as the eternal changing expression of spirit, of time as merely the measure and rhythm of progress or change. So Ruth found me willing to grant that all bad was a condition, not an unalterable thing, and that time was only a convention.

Concerning immortality Ruth believed all I do, and more besides. Alfred now agrees with me. He, too, feels that in some way he must continue to be.

Of the individual—or soul—Ruth thought as I. We also agreed on moral good and bad, and on the use and manner of prayer.

Marian asked me: “Why, if mind force forms body, can we not make our bodies perfect at once?”

I answered her that mind force had formed our bodies in the past, as they were now, and that our present, mental force was making future physical conditions; that all things went slowly, and the results of the past were inevitable. I spoke of the influence mind and action had on the body, on circulation, for instance. I said again that physical perfection could not be the aim, but only one of the conditions of progress.

On the subject of disease and cure Ruth and I disagreed entirely. But this we both held to be not tremendously important. I do not care here to record the arguments—not in the least bitter or heated—which we gladly left in air. None of us was in the least convinced by Ruth, and we were frank—she, as well as we—in our expressions of opinion.

So we found Ruth was with us in all that mattered, and had been candidly with us all the while. The children said the club had not changed their views, but enlarged and ordered them.

I read aloud the Christian Science prayer Ruth had brought some weeks ago:

MY PRAYER

“To be ever conscious of my unity with God, to listen for his voice, and hear no other call. To separate all error from my thought of man, and see him only as my father’s image, to show him reverence and share with him my holiest treasures.

“To keep my mental home a sacred place, golden with gratitude, redolent with love, white with purity, cleansed from the flesh.

“To send no thought into the world that will not bless, or cheer, or purify, or heal.

“To have no aim but to make earth a fairer, holier place, and to rise each day into a higher sense of Life and Love.”

We liked all of it, save the words “cleansed from the flesh.” Ruth explained that this meant cleansed from the idea of evil in the flesh.

“Then,” I answered, “the author should have said, though it is less poetical, ‘cleansed from the prejudice against the flesh.’ I would agree with that.”

Virginia again suggested the subject of animal consciousness, by telling Mark Twain’s story of the cat and the Christian Scientist. Ruth said that just now she was studying this subject.

Florence asked: “Do you believe jelly-fish are conscious?”

I reminded them of Cope’s theory of consciousness and desire as the cause of life, and of the higher consciousness swamping the lower. They remembered it, and were interested. Virginia said: “It is like the stars, which are always there, but cannot be seen when the sun shines.”

“Yes,” I answered, “the light of our larger consciousness hides those lesser feelings.”

We spoke of other religions and creeds, and Henry used the term—referring to Unitarianism—“a mild form of Christianity.”